IN RECENT TIMES the Barbados Transport Board has turned a deaf ear to the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU), general secretary Toni Moore has said.
She said that several of the recommendations made to the state-owned organisation by the BWU had been seemingly ignored.
After those recommendations were made, it was entirely up to the Transport Board to decide if they would implement them or not, she said.
“The union and the Transport Board have been engaging over the years. There have been discussions, there have been recommendations and the BWU even goes as far to helping with the scheduling and so on for the Transport Board,” Moore told reporters during the NATION’s Editorial Forum on Thursday.
“The most recent discussion that we were able to have with the Transport Board was regarding the pilot project that they sought to introduce with the private vehicles.
“We went and we told them where we envisioned there would be challenges and we made reasonable recommendations. We can be involved at the consultation level, but implementation is really left to the different boards and the Government,” Moore said.
“What has been different in recent times is that the Transport Board has in many respects started to close the door on a number of those discussions. It is the workers that we represent that have ideas and whose ideas we represent, but you can only go so far in that regard. The fleet and so on, that is operational issues that we can criticise but things that we do not have any control over.”
Moore said the situation was similar as it related to other statutory boards.
She said in the case of the Sanitation Service Authority (SSA), the National Union of Public Workers’ (NUPW) had made suggestions about the fleet, servicing and maintenance.
“A union can’t go and inject money and buy things and make it happen. We only have the positions and suggestions that we make. Whether people take them or reject them is often out of our control,” the general secretary insisted. (RB)
